Here's a rundown of the primary adjustments (tool-agnostic) that I make to most photos - in order and why I make them. It's a bit of a re-post, so I'm going to add lots of other detail and insights on each step. Please keep in mind that this is how I do it, but it may not be the best way to process your images. With that said, please feel free to ask me questions or critique my methods:
Notes on Post-Processing (PP)
(A) Do as much as you can in RAW as it's "non-destructive", Any adjustments made after this step will slowly (16-bit PSD or TIFF) or quickly (8-bit / JPEG) begin to rob the image of resolution and create banded skies, etc. Once your histogram looks like a comb instead of a rolling hill, you've overdone it.
(B) Working with RAW makes me think of my days as a (analog film) movie projectionist. Each time I started the projector, I would stand there and focus the lens. I would turn the knob until the image was clearly out-of-focus, and then turn it the other way until it was out-of-focus again, then make smaller turns until I got perfect focus. This is the way I try to adjust my photos. Too much of any one adjustment is bad, but not enough makes the photo appear lifeless and flat as well. The idea is to find the balance between the two, with an eye to underdoing it vs. overdoing it, which is all too easy to do.
(C) A calibrated monitor (D6500 for most purposes or D5000 for commercial printing) is nearly essential to editing. It's well worth the price of even the cheapest calibration tools from XRite, Colovision, and others to get accurate color and brightness. Also, do the processing in a dim room with no reflections on the screen for best results.
(D) The steps below assume the use of a lens correction module from DxO or PhotoShop/LR Adobe Camera RAW. The only exception to the use of the automated tools is usually the use vignetting. I often find myself turning the vignetting correction with some types of photos (portraits or close ups) as the natural vignetting can add a nice look and focus to the photo. I'm not a fan of adding vignettes, but the natural ones can look nice.
Workflow Steps for RAW Processing
1. Cropping (as needed) - I usually begin by cropping so the photo I'm working on is exactly the framing I want
Additional Thoughts: Like most people, I try to get this right in camera, but sometimes there's an errant leaf or something to clip. I also find myself using the rule of thirds, golden ratio, or other guides like having the subject look out of the frame and balancing the elements in the frame.
2. White balance - fix this first as it affects exposure and colors
Additional Thoughts: For interiors or mixed lighting, I often take a white balance card - usually the ColorChecker Passport, but even a sheet of paper will do so I have a reference in post. For nature shots, getting WB correct is often quite difficult because there are no neutral settings. I will typically start with Daylight, Shade, or Cloudy and play with the sliders until I achieve the WB I like. For pre- and post-sunrise shots, it can be extremely high, going into the 9000s, but once the sun comes up, Daylight generally gives the best/closest results. I like to leave a bit of the golden color vs. going neutral, but that's just a matter of personal preference.
3. Global Contrast - again, this affects other adjustments - I typically add a touch to most shots, but more if there's flare, fog, or other things that have reduced contrast, unless that's the look I want to achieve.
Additional Thoughts: Back to the focus knob analogy, it's best to play with this one until you get a good balance. I always watch the shadows when I adjust this as it's easy to "crush" the blacks a bit if the contrast is too high.
4. Exposure - I expose the right for everything but studio lit stuff, so I usually bump down the midtones a bit with the exposure setting, or if there are no true blacks or whites, I adjust for the midtone level I want to achieve.
Additional Thoughts: It occurs to me that this is probably my least used adjustment because the control is too coarse for my tastes, i.e. it affects way too much of the image if used for anything other than minor adjustments.
5. Black & white points - usually with curves tool. I make sure to adjust with the over- or under-exposure shown so I don't go too far. If the shot is high or low key, I'm careful about doing too much or too little at either end. If the shot has no blacks or whites, I generally skip this step.
Additional Thoughts: For photos with good contrast, I'll often skip steps 3 & 4 and go straight to these adjustments as they will generally yield the best results for exposure and contrast.
6. Color - using HSL- if there is a color cast left after WB adjustments, I correct it here.
Additional Thoughts: Sometimes you have a green or blue color cast from fluorescent lighting that you can't seem to get out with WB alone. Knocking the saturation down for that shade will help with the color cast. The same thing can be used with mixed lighting as well, though that may require layer masks in PhotoShop, which is down the road from this step.
7. Vibrancy - with most lenses, I leave this alone or just add a touch, but some of my older lenses seemed to need a slight bump. If the light was flat or the High ISO robbed the color, I'll add it here.
Additional Thoughts: To clarify - with most of the Canon EF primes, color saturation is excellent, but some of the older zooms like the 24-70 f/2.8, I found the colors needed a bit of a boost. Shooting at high ISO (above 1600 or 3200 on most bodies) also robs the image of some of its richness the higher you go, so vibrancy helps add that back. Watch out with skies and greys as it adds a lot of blue and will quickly turn your sky an odd shade of blue/purple or turn a great blue heron's gray feathers rather blue.
8. Saturation - using HSL - If there's a specific color I want to emphasize (yellow flowers in a landscape, perhaps) or reduce (say reds in skintones), I'll use the HSL slider to add or reduce saturation for that specific color
Additional Thoughts: This is sort of like the exposure slider - it's a rather coarse adjusment. It works well
9. Local contrast - I'll typically add some local contrast to most shots, but will reduce it for portraits - this affects sharpness
Additional Thoughts: For fine detail like blades of grass, bricks in a building, hair, feathers, etc. this is a very useful adjustment, but watch out for moire and overly harsh transitions. It's a good idea to adjust this at 50% magnification which is close to what it will look like if printed.
10. Sharpness - this is usually my final global adjustment and I will tweak it depending on how sharp the focus/lens is, how high of ISO I used, and the subject matter.
Additional Thoughts: As I said in step 9, there's an old desktop publishing trick of adjusting sharpnes at 50% magnification. This is very close to how the sharpness will appear when it's printed. I'm not sure how Retina et al displays affect this, but it really does work.
11. Local edits - dust spots from the sensor, red eye, blemishes, etc. I try to do as much work with global changes during raw conversion and I prefer to do as much in camera as possible, but Photoshop is great for layer blends, retouching, masking, and much more if that's what I need.
Additional Thoughts: this will be the subject of future posts...but PhotoShop is my prime tool, with Topaz Labs Remask and Nik being the primary plug-ins that I use.
Notes on Post-Processing (PP)
(A) Do as much as you can in RAW as it's "non-destructive", Any adjustments made after this step will slowly (16-bit PSD or TIFF) or quickly (8-bit / JPEG) begin to rob the image of resolution and create banded skies, etc. Once your histogram looks like a comb instead of a rolling hill, you've overdone it.
(B) Working with RAW makes me think of my days as a (analog film) movie projectionist. Each time I started the projector, I would stand there and focus the lens. I would turn the knob until the image was clearly out-of-focus, and then turn it the other way until it was out-of-focus again, then make smaller turns until I got perfect focus. This is the way I try to adjust my photos. Too much of any one adjustment is bad, but not enough makes the photo appear lifeless and flat as well. The idea is to find the balance between the two, with an eye to underdoing it vs. overdoing it, which is all too easy to do.
(C) A calibrated monitor (D6500 for most purposes or D5000 for commercial printing) is nearly essential to editing. It's well worth the price of even the cheapest calibration tools from XRite, Colovision, and others to get accurate color and brightness. Also, do the processing in a dim room with no reflections on the screen for best results.
(D) The steps below assume the use of a lens correction module from DxO or PhotoShop/LR Adobe Camera RAW. The only exception to the use of the automated tools is usually the use vignetting. I often find myself turning the vignetting correction with some types of photos (portraits or close ups) as the natural vignetting can add a nice look and focus to the photo. I'm not a fan of adding vignettes, but the natural ones can look nice.
Workflow Steps for RAW Processing
1. Cropping (as needed) - I usually begin by cropping so the photo I'm working on is exactly the framing I want
Additional Thoughts: Like most people, I try to get this right in camera, but sometimes there's an errant leaf or something to clip. I also find myself using the rule of thirds, golden ratio, or other guides like having the subject look out of the frame and balancing the elements in the frame.
2. White balance - fix this first as it affects exposure and colors
Additional Thoughts: For interiors or mixed lighting, I often take a white balance card - usually the ColorChecker Passport, but even a sheet of paper will do so I have a reference in post. For nature shots, getting WB correct is often quite difficult because there are no neutral settings. I will typically start with Daylight, Shade, or Cloudy and play with the sliders until I achieve the WB I like. For pre- and post-sunrise shots, it can be extremely high, going into the 9000s, but once the sun comes up, Daylight generally gives the best/closest results. I like to leave a bit of the golden color vs. going neutral, but that's just a matter of personal preference.
3. Global Contrast - again, this affects other adjustments - I typically add a touch to most shots, but more if there's flare, fog, or other things that have reduced contrast, unless that's the look I want to achieve.
Additional Thoughts: Back to the focus knob analogy, it's best to play with this one until you get a good balance. I always watch the shadows when I adjust this as it's easy to "crush" the blacks a bit if the contrast is too high.
4. Exposure - I expose the right for everything but studio lit stuff, so I usually bump down the midtones a bit with the exposure setting, or if there are no true blacks or whites, I adjust for the midtone level I want to achieve.
Additional Thoughts: It occurs to me that this is probably my least used adjustment because the control is too coarse for my tastes, i.e. it affects way too much of the image if used for anything other than minor adjustments.
5. Black & white points - usually with curves tool. I make sure to adjust with the over- or under-exposure shown so I don't go too far. If the shot is high or low key, I'm careful about doing too much or too little at either end. If the shot has no blacks or whites, I generally skip this step.
Additional Thoughts: For photos with good contrast, I'll often skip steps 3 & 4 and go straight to these adjustments as they will generally yield the best results for exposure and contrast.
6. Color - using HSL- if there is a color cast left after WB adjustments, I correct it here.
Additional Thoughts: Sometimes you have a green or blue color cast from fluorescent lighting that you can't seem to get out with WB alone. Knocking the saturation down for that shade will help with the color cast. The same thing can be used with mixed lighting as well, though that may require layer masks in PhotoShop, which is down the road from this step.
7. Vibrancy - with most lenses, I leave this alone or just add a touch, but some of my older lenses seemed to need a slight bump. If the light was flat or the High ISO robbed the color, I'll add it here.
Additional Thoughts: To clarify - with most of the Canon EF primes, color saturation is excellent, but some of the older zooms like the 24-70 f/2.8, I found the colors needed a bit of a boost. Shooting at high ISO (above 1600 or 3200 on most bodies) also robs the image of some of its richness the higher you go, so vibrancy helps add that back. Watch out with skies and greys as it adds a lot of blue and will quickly turn your sky an odd shade of blue/purple or turn a great blue heron's gray feathers rather blue.
8. Saturation - using HSL - If there's a specific color I want to emphasize (yellow flowers in a landscape, perhaps) or reduce (say reds in skintones), I'll use the HSL slider to add or reduce saturation for that specific color
Additional Thoughts: This is sort of like the exposure slider - it's a rather coarse adjusment. It works well
9. Local contrast - I'll typically add some local contrast to most shots, but will reduce it for portraits - this affects sharpness
Additional Thoughts: For fine detail like blades of grass, bricks in a building, hair, feathers, etc. this is a very useful adjustment, but watch out for moire and overly harsh transitions. It's a good idea to adjust this at 50% magnification which is close to what it will look like if printed.
10. Sharpness - this is usually my final global adjustment and I will tweak it depending on how sharp the focus/lens is, how high of ISO I used, and the subject matter.
Additional Thoughts: As I said in step 9, there's an old desktop publishing trick of adjusting sharpnes at 50% magnification. This is very close to how the sharpness will appear when it's printed. I'm not sure how Retina et al displays affect this, but it really does work.
11. Local edits - dust spots from the sensor, red eye, blemishes, etc. I try to do as much work with global changes during raw conversion and I prefer to do as much in camera as possible, but Photoshop is great for layer blends, retouching, masking, and much more if that's what I need.
Additional Thoughts: this will be the subject of future posts...but PhotoShop is my prime tool, with Topaz Labs Remask and Nik being the primary plug-ins that I use.